The statements in this section merely provide background information related to the present disclosure and may not constitute prior art.
Recreational and similar vehicles commonly have televisions and other receivers available for the use and enjoyment of the occupants. With such vehicles, it is important to be able to raise and adjust the antenna for best reception and to lower the antenna for travel. To this end, for several years the industry standard for recreational vehicles and travel trailers is to utilize a low profile television antenna system 1, such as that which is illustrated in Background FIG. 1.
As shown, the standard antenna system 1 includes a signal antenna 2 having a mounting block 3 along one side for engaging a pair of rectangular antenna support beams 4. Hardware 5 is mounted on the roof 6 of the vehicle 7, and allows the antenna to be raised, lowered and rotated (see arrow a) via a control unit that is located within the vehicle. One example of a commercially available antenna system is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,262,793, to Sperry, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.
Owing to the unique forces encountered by such systems, the above described support beams are of paramount importance. For this reason, RV manufacturers have maintained this design, despite the fact that it is incompatible with the circular receivers on virtually every type of modern HDTV antenna. As such, RV owners are not currently able to replace the factory supplied (typically) 25 mile range antennas on their vehicles with modern high definition antennas having ranges over 125-150 miles, without also replacing the rest of the antenna system including the beams and internal control unit.
Accordingly, it would be beneficial to provide an adapter that is capable of mating a circular-based HDTV antenna onto to the structure of an existing RV antenna system without the drawbacks described above.